FANTASY ISLAND

THE WORLD of romantic fiction is a strange one. It’s a place where twins who were separated at birth are likely to run into each other on any given street corner. Where any two people who give birth to three daughters will, by some miracle of genetics, end up with a mysterious brunette, a demure blonde and a fiery red-head. It’s a place where women gasp and swoon so often you wonder they have time for anything else. And, above all, it’s a world where men don’t fall asleep right after sex.

If your idea of a romantic evening involves nothing more than cutting off the drink while you’re still coherent enough to mutter “Fancy a shag?” before stumbling to a taxi rank, you may be surprised to learn that an overwhelming number of romance novels are actually set in your homeland. Along with the American West, Regency England and the Scottish Highlands, Ireland – particularly the West – is a favourite among romance authors and readers alike.

As if to signpost this fascination with the auld sod, New York’s St. Martin’s Press will publish Emerald Enchantment to coincide with St. Patrick’s Day this year. Touted as an anthology in which “Today’s most beloved authors celebrate the romantic wonder of St. Patrick’s Day,” Emerald Enchantment serves as a quick study in the fixation romance fiction has with Ireland.

All parties involved in the project have waxed sentimental about the country in question in a recent issue of Romantic Times, the romance genre’s long-standing monthly news and reviews magazine. St. Martin’s editor Jennifer Enderlin takes the lead: “I have always been fascinated by Ireland,” she writes. “It is a land where magic is everywhere and where fairy tales seem more like history than legend. Ireland means romance and what could be more romantic than looking at Irish love stories through the ages – just in time for St. Patrick’s Day.”

Paddy’s Day always struck yours truly as distinctly unromantic, but no-one involved in Emerald Enchantment seems to mind. and contrary to what readers familiar with the holiday might suspect, none of these characters is getting completely rat-arsed and making utter fools of themselves in the name of love. In fact, in her own blurb in Romantic Times, author Bonnie Pega suggests that if she has ever actually experienced St. Patrick’s Day in Ireland, she must have spent it bouncing between The Kilkenny Shop, House Of Ireland and a tour bus parked across the street.

“Even though it involved rewriting Irish folklore,” she explains, “I wrote a story about a young lady leprechaun. Her pot of gold is a suitcase that yields such diversities as shamrocks, green teddy bears, and Irish lace tablecloths – as well as the magic and mystery of love.”

In “The Lady In Green”, Pega tells the tale of Shannon, a stunning leprechaun woman who brings happiness to her long-time friend Michael, a man struggling to raise his daughter in the wake of his wife’s death. While only planning a short stay with Michael until he finds a proper housekeeper, Shannon finds that “the Irish in him calls to her.” She whips up some green shamrock-shaped pancakes without the benefit of food colouring, and before you know it she and Michael are sharing kisses that taste like Irish whiskey and bringing a red-headed son into the world a year later on St. Patrick’s Day.

In a similarly ridiculous tale, “The Bride’s Gift” by Raine Cantrell, an Irish mail-order bride with cascading “fiery” hair (not unlike Shannon’s, strangely enough) comes to New Mexico territory in 1878 to meet her own dark Irish gent. The two find love, but not before Nicolas discovers what his superstitious wife has been hiding in her dowry chest: “This is what you’ve whispered to? What you hid in that damn chest, protectin’ it like it was gold? Damn Irish sod!”

An enraged Nicolas hurls “the small emerald caret of grass” into a flood caused by a sudden downpour only to discover that he truly loves Brianna – sod or no sod. “I swear on my life that I’ll find your precious sod,” he cries out when he’s lost sight of her in the dense storm, “I’ll get Patrick (that’s his cousin in Ireland) to send a gilded chest full of emerald green to please you. Only answer me, love! Just answer me.”

His love, of course, answers and they live happily ever after, reaping the rewards of riches bestowed upon them and their progeny by said magical lump of grass.

It’s no surprise that Irish land literally plays a part in this tale since a fascination with the actual topography of the country pervades most romances set there. Most often described as “wild and beautiful,” expansive green hills and stark cliffs are the lifeblood of Irish heroes and heroines. As Brenna Laughlan, the heroine of Julie Grace’s Lovefire prepares to head for the New World, she spurs her mare to a gallop while her red-gold hair slips loose from its ribbons and trails behind her. “To her left lay Dublin, cradled in a cleft of the hills, a few church spires rising above the grey fog that hugged the low ground. In a few minutes, the sun would burn away the mist, revealing the brilliant yellow-green of the hills, dotted with grazing sheep. She loved these hills; had walked and ridden them ever since she could remember.”

And when “beautiful, flame-haired Mara Despencer” returns to her homeland to avenge cruelty done to her family by Cromwell, in Jaclyn Redding’s Tempting Fate, she realises that “she’d nearly forgotten just how much she loved this wild and beautiful land, for it had been so many years since she’d last seen it.”

Dramatic landscapes and an extraordinary prevalence of red-heads aside, the idea of the Irish man as the quintessential romantic hero is arguably the most laughable aspect of Ireland’s misrepresentation in romantic fiction. Great struggles, causes and cliffs might a hero make. But economic depression, church laws and pub culture are just as likely to offer up unmotivated, non-committal, unself-actualised, mother-fixated, desperate, alcoholic skirt-chasers. (“Give us a kiss, there, luv.”)

While there are, of course, Irish men who possess the traits most desired in a hero (intelligence, tenderness, strength and a sense of humour), the number of appearances Irish men make in romances is much higher than their worldwide reputation as great lovers actually merits.

Romance heroes don’t ignore women they spent the night with at parties a week later. They don’t think they should break it off with you because they might prefer being out with the lads. They don’t get drunk and demand your phone number from a friend when you haven’t found it in your heart to give it to them yourself. They don’t ask you to slowdance and hit on you before telling you they’re married or spend the night before telling you they’re still hooked on their ex. They most definitely do not say “I know you want to fuck me,” then try to follow you home. And they never say “I love you” only to drop off the face of the earth.

Men everywhere do these things every day and the Irish are no exception. Sure, I can imagine creating my own Irish romantic hero – a man, say, with Luka Bloom’s heart, Bono’s mystique, and David Couse’s wit, to start – but one still has to wonder whether any actual Irish men have inspired romance novels. Women readers familiar with the dynamics of romantic relations in Ireland will likely have a hard time seeing any resemblances between romance heroes and the men in their lives.

Compare, just for fun, how two Irish men – one imaginary and one real – fare in a similar situation: they’re in a car with a woman they want to have sex with.

Scenario A: Rogan practically forces Maggie into his car because she’s late.

“Are you by nature surly in the morning, Rogan?” Maggie asks.

“I’m not surly,” he snaps. “I have a lot to accomplish today.”

“Oh, to be sure. Empires to build, fortunes to win,” Maggie jokes.

That does it. Rogan swerves to the side of the road, causing the driver who had been cruising behind him to blast rudely on his horn. Grabbing Maggie by the collar, he hauls her half out of her seat . . . drags her head back and plunders her moth.

“It was that or throttle you,” Richard offers by way of explanation.

“I prefer being kissed to strangled,” Maggie admits, but Rogan insists that the timing is inappropriate.

“I prefer knowing whom I’m sleeping with,” he says, “I prefer having some mutual affection and respect.”

Scenario B: A man named Richard has offered a woman named Rosemary a lift along a country road and they get to talking.

“If paternity leave came in, as they are proposing,” Richard says, “I would only ever hire a man who wasn’t married. Or one who was only living with a woman.”

Rosemary says, “Do you mean to say that if I had a child and had to leave work . . .”

Richard interrupts, “And God know I’d like to be the father of that child.”

Richard and Rosemary argue some more about women’s capacity to do men’s work and Richard asks Rosemary to have a drink with him. Rosemary tells him she can’t.

“Well, we’ll have dinner tomorrow night, then. How about that?” he asks.

Alas, she’s busy.

“Well, lunch then. And no strings attached,” Richard persists, “Though God knows I wouldn’t mind having a few strings attached to you.”

In a final attempt, Richard says “Where do you live? Could I knock on your door sometime?”

Rosemary says good-bye and gets out of the car as Richard leans across the seat: “We’ll just have lunch with no strings attached and I’ll bring you right home and let you out of the car. I promise I won’t rape you.”

Scenario A is the gist of a scene from Nora Roberts’ very fictional romance Born In Fire, the first book in a trilogy about three Irish sisters. Scenario B, on the other hand, is based on the real life experience of author Rosemary Mahoney, shared in her non-fiction book Whoredom In Kimmage.

The contrast might seem so striking as to be comical. But the difference between fact and fiction becomes even more disturbing when you realise that Nora Roberts’ Born In Fire is actually as close to reality as romantic fiction involving Ireland gets. Maggie, the heroine, drinks Guinness – by the pint – on more than one occasion. One morning she wakes up hungover, having slept in a field and not knowing exactly how she ended up there. Her parents have been unhappily married for years, her mother has little support for her daughter’s career ambition and her father spends his last dying days in the pub. Not so far-fetched at all.

But as for Rogan, the hero, there’s absolutely nothing about him that makes him seem Irish and one is forced to wonder why the author felt the need to make him so at all. Roberts points out in a “Dear Reader” letter which prefaces the book that her heroine, Maggie, “is a strong and opinionated woman, a Clare woman, with all the turbulence of that fascinating west country.” But the author doesn’t seem to be able to relate her hero Rogan, a “sophisticated Dublin gallery owner” to the land of his supposed birth and upbringing, “a land of green hills, wild cliffs, and enduring beauty.”

The quality of verbal sparring, witty banter, whatever you want to call it, between the hero and heroine can make or break a romance novel, and it may be in this aspect alone that Rogan and many of his fictional compatriots succeed both as romantic heroines and Irishmen.

Conflict between the two main players is essential to the romance genre (a genre which, by the way, accounts for a whopping 48% of all paperback book sales in the US). The Irish have made a national art of the very kind of interplay readers love most. This is why Irish maids pop up all the time in romances set in England – to provide witty comic relief and colourful language in an otherwise stiff setting. This is why the Irish emigrant tale is told more often than those of any other nationality – sure people from other countries came to the US and started new lives, but they’re not all as bleedin’ funny as the Irish.

So if you’ve ever wondered why middle-aged American women drag their husbands to your homeland by the busload, now you know. They’ve read enough romances to know that dark and mysterious Irishmen really know how to sweep a girl off her feet, and that Ireland’s wildness and beauty inspire lovers to greatness. With any luck – Irish luck – their husbands just might learn something.

No wonder Aer Lingus doesn’t advertise “Satisfaction Guaranteed.”